Sales management: 3 Secrets to improving your salespeople’s selling skills
Everyone in sales must have it; unfortunately many don’t. I’m referring to selling skills which is defined as “your salespeople’s natural disposition and skills for winning new and profitable deals for the company”. But there are three attributes your salespeople need to develop if you want them to improve their selling skills.
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They are: sales-acumen, charisma, and self-control. If they have these attributes, there isn't a single thing they can’t sell.
Here are three attributes your salespeople need to improve their selling skills:
1. Sales-Acumen
• Your salespeople must be bold and willing to reach out to clients and prospects. They must leave their comfort zone to engage key decision makers who are usually, in a B2B sales environment at the executive level. Successful salespeople are audacious yet realistic about their chances of winning deals.
• Successful salespeople avoid bargaining with prospects and customers. Bargaining is about focusing on who is right. It is competitive and win-lose. It is a technique of getting things and services at lower than asking prices resulting in your salespeople haggling about prices as if they are doing business at the roadside or selling vegetables in our traditional open market. Instead, your salespeople must learn to negotiate. Negotiation is about focusing on what is right. It is cooperative and win-win. It ensures a long term mutually beneficial and profitable business relationship.
• Your salespeople must continuously work on their pre-requisite sales techniques and skills. For example, if they can’t ask for commitments (closing), then they can’t open relationships (prospecting). If they can’t differentiate themselves (differentiate), then they also can’t open opportunities (prospecting). If they can’t negotiate, then they can’t sell value.
2. Charisma
We all know about the attraction people have towards charismatic people be it political leaders, athletes, friends, preachers and many others. Yes indeed, “charisma” means having a personality which attracts people to you; that makes people follow you; that makes people adore you. In the same way, in sales, charisma sells! The fact is that people buy from people they like and trust. To become charismatic, your salespeople must learn to:
• Express themselves comfortably when interacting with prospects and customers. To be able to do that which requires excellent product knowledge, great selling skills as well as communication skills.
• Put their solution-based ideas and proposals forward and get prospects and customers to support their point of view. This approach focuses more on a consultative selling.
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• Understand how to raise prospects and customers’ interest in the company’s products and services by being eloquent speakers.
• Exude confidence but not become conceited.
They must be self-assured and never double-guess their abilities. They must possess a mind-set of knowing what they want and are unwilling to compromise on that at any cost.
3. Self-Control
Given the highly competitive environment we find ourselves in, it is very easy for your salespeople to focus on their failures than successes when it comes to self-control.
Although an effort intended to help them achieve their goals, failing to control themselves is exactly that – a failure. It is therefore important for your salespeople to first of all banish failures which irritate and hold them back; and secondly ensure that their effort to boost their will power is successful enough to put them on the right path to achieving their goals. The following are four self-control strategies your salespeople might use:
• Ensure that they are calm and poised in every sales interaction they have;
• Always demonstrate enthusiasm and shouldn’t get discouraged in times of difficulty;
• Ensure that their emotions do not dominate them; and
• Know how to find solutions to prospects and customers’ pain by being objective and thinking clearly.
Conclusion
Selling skills is all but one dimension of four other sales disposition dimensions which every sales organisation must ensure that salespeople improve on.
In order to identify the sales skills gaps, sales managers must conduct sales profile assessments of existing salespeople with the view to identifying and filling the gaps in their selling skills. — GB